Well done Italy! #ENGvITA
07.03.2026 18:35
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Well done Italy! #ENGvITA
Back in London briefly for funeral of my eldest sister. At 75 & mentally handicapped she was independent of mind, laughing & warm with those she liked, & suffered no fools. Her last couple of years in the UK care system were awful, but she found joy in life & made may friends. She’ll be much missed.
I love Waterstones, but it bothers me that they’ve slowly come to own unique places like Hatchards. Better than see iconic places close, but sad there isn’t enough book buying to sustain bookshops. (he says while reading on his Kindle…)
At yesterday's Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, I pressed Prof Michele Dougherty STFC Executive Chair to explain how the £162m financial shortfall threatening our physics, astronomy, and nuclear research base had come about and why early career researchers were paying for it.
You (three) did a great job!
I was quietly amused by how clearly she didn’t want to explicitly throw her predecessor under the bus, while then being backed into a corner by the committee to do just that. The committee had some very reasoned lines of questioning.
The pushback there that STFC was maybe being too passive on finding paths to more money from UKRI was interesting. Hope that sentiment gets some traction with resource to soften this transition appearing.
A LOT going on in the Commons select committee hearing on STFC budget pressures
Michele Dougherty said that, despite having previously been on STFC's council, she didn't know until starting as exec chair in Jan 2025 that there was a £100-150m shortfall
She said it was "not what I signed up to" 😶
Hear, hear!
I have huge respect for Michele Dougherty after seeing her as HoD at Imperial for years. Can’t say I envy her the shit show she seems to have inherited in taking up the STFC CEO role.
So much of the STFC funding crisis seems to hang on whether PPAN researchers are actually able to access this big new AI fund. That seems a huge risk and a messy restructuring.
That’s a crappy situation in Edinburgh. I have “fond” memories of taking a pay cut from the Hubble to take up a UK lectureship. So not much has changed on that front in 15yrs!
An open letter has been sent to Lord Vallance from 57 heads of UK physics departments and institutes, including all of the heads of physics departments of the Russell group.
www.iop.org/about/news/o...
Good luck! Give them hell!
Good to see things didn’t get much crazier while I was on an 11hr flight.
Wine tasting with a spittoon. Strong discipline required.
That’s an impressively pointless letter to a newspaper. Whoever told Michele to put that out was an idiot. It achieves nothing useful and sacrifices her credibility.
Cartoon that shows how PhDs are pushing the frontiers of knowledge.
Keep pushing & don't forget the bigger picture :)
Never have I so wanted to ditch the conference and become a beach bum.
All kudos to Ukraine for holding out against Russian invasion for four years. May they continue to hold strong.
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...
UCSB is building new accommodation for postdocs. I love that trees on the site are being relocated and not just cut down.
Hard to describe how stunning the downtown LA skyline looks when you drive down the 110 at night. Good job there’s usually a traffic jam there to let you admire it safely.
Not unrelated to making Professor and then moving to a country with a firm mandatory retirement age. :)
I’m frequently pondering the third act of academic life
(1: UG to faculty.
2: junior faculty to full professor.
3: professor to retirement.)
The Big project? University leadership? Writing books? More of the same? Public intellectual? Coast? Crusade? Very interesting asking Profs their thoughts.
“Though much is taken,
much yet abides.
And though we are not now that
strength,
which in old days moved
Earth and Heaven,
that which we are, we are.”
Don’t take the sky, please. It’s the one place we can all look up to and find a moment of peace.
And just to be clear, this affects radio astronomy too. These satellites emit radio wavelengths in the supposedly protected astronomical wavebands. Ground based radio will become nigh impossible. 🔭📡
It’s almost 25 years since I first came to Caltech as a summer SURF student. That turned out to be a monumental moment in my life trajectory.
Trippy to be back at Caltech. Haven’t been here in at least 15 years and there’s waves of nostalgia.
“A pathetic yet noble figure. He has saved out of the wreck the only thing he could possibly save - his own self-respect”. That captures wonderfully the mixed feels I have at many protest resignations.
Very good piece on the questions around contracts and “acts of god” affecting student-university relations and the COVID claim.
